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The invention of photography in 1839 led to a revolutionary way of understanding and seeing the world. By 1841 the technology had arrived in Singapore, and gradually spread throughout Southeast Asia. The Peranakan community was among the earliest resident groups to be photographed. The first images of babas and nyonyas that survive were taken in about 1857.

Peranakans were quick to exploit the potential of the new visual form. From ritual spaces to personal albums, from intimate lockets to social media, the presence of the photographic image in Peranakan cultural life in the last 160 years reveals the typically diverse ways an old community has grappled with this visual medium in expressing identity, tradition, locality, modernity, nationality, and art.

The exhibition includes studio and amateur photographs of Peranakans across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Myanmar. In celebration of a donation by Mr and Mrs Lee Kip Lee of more than 2,500 photographs to the Peranakan Museum, this exhibition explores the multifaceted role of photography in the lives of Peranakans.

The Peranakan Museum explores the culture of Peranakan communities in Southeast Asia. Installed in the former Tao Nan Chinese School, built in 1912, this intimate museum possesses one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of Peranakan objects. Galleries on three floors illustrate the cultural traditions and the distinctive visual arts of the Peranakans.

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